A Milil-ion Ways To Travel – Sheryl, the Fae-Touched – 22.08

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Keeping her eyes closed, Sheryl listens to the music from the streets ebb and flow around her. What a magical place, filled with spirit and life! The songs she has heard – what beautiful songs! Not just from the flutes that are built into the very architecture of the buildings, but from the people themselves. The beautiful air genasi, the elegant cat-folk and the strong minotaurs were quickly becoming her favourite people outside of the Court. Their love for song equally matched hers. She spent the last two days learning about the Lord of Songs at the temple on the island and though she would love to stay, she feels the call even now. Her feet were getting restless again, already anticipating the next adventure she can feel just around the bend.

As she dances across the stones in the streets of Za'Suul, the wind suddenly picks up and catches her hair in a whirl of notes. Sheryl lets out a cry of joy and her hands dance across her harp in harmony, notes full of Sylvan magic cascading from her lips. Her features become more fey-like the more she sings with music all around her, at her fingertips, inside her heart, this is a place she feels like she could belong in. A place she could call home.

Cutting through the melodies, clearer than it should have been as if the person speaking was standing right next to her, she hears a voice whisper in her ear.

"Enjoying your freedom little Mer?"

Sheryl's fingers pluck an unintentional discordant note as she nearly trips on a raised stone on the walkway. Gaining her footing, she turns around to see who spoke, not sure if she should believe it was who she thought, scared it might be more than just a trick.

"Krux?" she says tentatively, looking around, eyes wide and slightly fearful. The wind has stopped, the music is gone. The only sound is coming from her throat as she tries to master her breathing. Nothing responds so she hesitantly tries again. "Kruxeral, is-... are you there?"

There is no answer.

Not wanting to wait any longer, Sheryl holds her harp close to her chest and starts to walk, then jog, then run. Her feet barely touch the ground as she makes her way quickly down to the docks. A feeling of something chasing her giving her feet a speed she wouldn't normally have.

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Sails full to bursting, the crew is in full swing after setting off from the Cape. Sheryl watches Za'Suul slowly drift away, a slight melancholy feeling in her heart. She didn't think she would fall in love with a place so quickly. She wants to come back one day, maybe find out more about who Milil was before he ascended. What sort of music did he compose? Would she be able to sing a song so powerful as to break spells like him? He seemed to like a lot of the same magics she does and he played the harp like her, maybe there is some similarities between their stories.

When I am next in Port First, I will talk to the high priestess at the temple there, Uloria, and ask her some of my questions. I do have that invitation from Waz after all!

With that thought, Sheryl settles into a small alcove on the deck, eyes scanning the horizon for the first signs of land but also keeping an eye out for any black sales. She and her friends did some serious damage to the pirate crew, but the captain did swear revenge upon them. It would be too soon for that, but a delayed revenge is all the colder when it finally strikes and she knows all about that.

Convinced that nothing will disturb her, she starts writing down lyrics for a sea shanty tune about the white horned, black sailed ship that cut through the night to stop the vessel of songs, but a brave bard and her trusted companions saved the revelries from being silenced forever. She was in a particularly juicy bit where a wild fisherman who spoke with the guttural sounds of the Deep was casting his famed net over the pirates when that same voice breaks through her thoughts.

"Is this all you do with your freedom? Write songs and tell tall tales?"

Sheryl jumps up, eyes wide, quill held out like a dagger. A minotaur crew member on deck sees her sudden movement and looks out the port side. "What is it? Pirates?" He stomps over, scanning the horizon.

Sheryl blinks, confused. "No I- uh... I thought-" Sheryl looks around trying to see where the voice came from but all she hears is a mischievous chuckle from behind her. She resists the urge to turn around and stab the source of that voice with her sharp quill. Instead she turns to the minotaur and gives a soft laugh of embarrassment, "I thought I saw a rat! Silly me. No pirates here!”

The minotaur looks at Sheryl, scans the waters again, then grunts as he turns away, returning to his duties. Sheryl keeps smiling at him though her hands are balled into tiny shaking fists at her side.

"I see you've learned how to lie to the Mundane Folk. Glad your lessons haven't gone to waste!"

She doesn’t respond. Instead, she makes a show of picking up her belongings and putting them away. Once she has done that she picks up her harp and heads over to the stairs to climb them to the aft of the deck.

Speaking low so no one can overhear her she finally replies. "I didn’t lie. I did see a rat. A rat with mangy brown fur, hoofed feet instead of claws, horrible horns- ah!"

She trips on air and for a moment she sees his face. Wood brown features, verdant eyes, mischievous lips and elegant horns that curl up and back from a face that could be either friend or foe. He winks at her and she tries to lunge at him up the stairs, but the air shimmers and he’s invisible once more, so she misses.

"Where are you, you sneaky bastar-" She feels a light kick to her butt and she falls forward, banging her knee on a step. Sheryl curses and turns around a glow of lilac at her lips, ready to unleash some psychic words at Krux. "Show yourself you coward!" she hisses in Sylvan.

"Tsk tsk tsk. Merla, that's not how you should speak to your master," the voice emphasises the last word mockingly. Sheryl sees the crew giving her side eye glances. She lets the spell drop from her lips, finishes climbing the stairs and crosses the deck over to the aft railing. Glancing around, there’s no one else up here at the moment. The ship is on course and the weather is helping guide them back. But Sheryl feels a storm beginning to rage inside her so she grips the railing like a lifeline.

"Don't call me that," she says in a low voice.

"But that is your Name! Not this assumed one you have people calling you." Sheryl ignores his teasing tone. There's an exasperated sigh from behind her. "I'm so bored now that you're gone. Please, come back."

Sheryl keeps her eyes focus on the horizon. "No."

"I could make you." She doesn't need to see Krux's face to know the kind of grin she can hear in those words. All mischief and wickedness. She feels his calloused fingers lightly trail down her arm and she resists the urge to slap him. She doesn’t want to get into a fight with Krux and besides, she isn’t powerful enough to fight him. Not yet.

Instead she tries words.

"But then She would know, and you know how that would end for you," she turns and grins at the spot where she thought his voice was coming from, meeting it with her own wickedness. "Can you really risk angering Her?"

She feels Krux pull away from her. "Things aren't the same since you’ve left. They have...changed." Sheryl notices the way Krux hesitated and a little knot of worry twists in her gut. But she won’t ask. She earned her one year on this mortal plane. She will make the most of it. She has to. And that means distancing herself.

“It has been only a few weeks since I left, Krux. I still have months more. I think you of all people can find someone else to spend your time with. I wasn’t the only one you were teaching.”

“True, true,” Sheryl hears Krux leap up and settle down on the railing. “But Durdys isn’t half the pupil you were and she’s been studying longer than you’ve been alive! By the way, I saw the way you made that drow your servant. The Lady herself would have been proud to see you embodying her like that. Of course, you wouldn’t have to charm me to do your bidding.”

Sheryl blushes at the compliment but doesn’t give in. Krux notices and leans in and though she cannot see him she can feel him really looking at her. His voice is softer, more intimate.

“I have never seen anyone, not elf, not human, nor eladrin, pick up the fae-magics like you little Mer. I see it on your skin. I feel it when your hair lifts in the wind. I taste it when your eyes look at mine. You’ve gotten stronger.” Sheryl’s feels his hand touch her face to turn it to look at him. “You left us for this world and yet you are becoming more and more like us every day. Do you not miss the lands of never ending summer?”

“I do, every day. But…” she hesitates, feeling like the little girl she once was, lost in a dark forest, full of terrors. She swallows that fear and looks out at the sea, where Za’Suul was on the horizon. “But I need to know for sure. The Court, The Lady, you, all of it was all I’d ever known. How can I be the songmaker I want to be, without living and experiencing? Existing wasn’t enough. Being wicked wasn’t enough. I-... I need this Krux.” She reaches out and he takes her hand in his, like a lord would a lady, with kindness. “Please, understand that.”

A part of her wishes she could look into his eyes in this moment, see those fields of green that she and he had made music in so many times. But he stays invisible, and the other part of her, the side that wanted to leave, is glad. Because if she saw him then, she would have stepped off the railing with him, back into the lands of summer and never looked back.

Maybe that’s why he does not show himself. Because he knows I’d go with him if I did.

Krux sighs and lifts Sheryl’s hand and she feels a feather light kiss on her knuckles. “I’ve not been so taken with a mortal before you little Mer. I remember when I first saw you, so small and scared, but with music in your soul. I was smitten from the first moment I met you.” He lets go of her hand and she feels rather than hears him leap down from the railing to the deck. “It may have only been a month for you, but for me your absence has been a lifetime.”

Sheryl blushes in earnest this time, playing with her fingers. Hesitantly she says, “Maybe you could stay with me awhile longer? You came all this way and the least I could do is sing you a song or two before you go? I have compositions I think you’d love to hear. One about a man who fell in love with a horse and the other-” She stops herself because the minotaur from earlier comes up to the aft, giving her a curious look. Sheryl waves and sits down bringing her harp to her lap, her notebook beside her with the lyrics she has written.

Whispering softly Sheryl asks, “Krux are you there?”

The strings on her harp vibrate with a beautiful chord, one that Krux always played when he was happy with something she’d written. She smiles like the sun and begins to play. She weaves through the story of a Cat and his Horse, the mighty bard and her pirate fighting companions, and ends with a story of a small fae princess, lost at sea in a little boat, and the fae prince who sings her vessel home.